Built for the Food Clerk’s Union, this building is a standard corporate style office building, a flat two-story structure of white concrete and black aluminum windows, fronted by a minimally landscaped entrance courtyard and parking lot.
As of 2014, the Crescent Building is undergoing a gut renovation and exterior alteration. Interestingly, unlike many of its neighbors, the develop has chosen to keep the existing shell of the building, possibly speaking to the original quality of the structure and its adaptability. The Chamber Award program speaks directly to this in stating that “The Cresent Building in Long Island City enhances the value of property in its immediate vicinity and could well serve as the impetus for future commercial-business development in the Queens Plaza area.” The basic layout is 9 floors of reinforced concrete, brick face on the exterior, and a plethora of windows.
This diminutive building still exists but the 1968 design is obscured by a contemporary design. Originally passerby saw a law firm housed behind a facade of glass in bronzed aluminum framing and surrounded by a peripheral frame of marble facing; today one sees a plain box of concrete painted blue and housing a karaoke bar.
The Cord Meyer Office Building is a late gasp of corporate modernism in Queens. Cord Meyer was responsible for much of the development of Forest Hills, developing housing from the turn of the century through the 1980s and later switching efforts to coop conversions and real estate management. Their nine-story office building occupies a prominent intersection in Forest Hills along Queens Boulevard, standing conspiciously among significantly lower-rise residential neighbors. The building is clad in a bronze-colored aluminum and glass exterior curtain wall capped by a masonry tower at one end. The whole building floats above a commercial base which has been altered. The Building Award still hangs inside the lobby entrance.
The Tymon Building is a fun, quirky survivor. A multipurpose commercial building that would look right at home in Los Angeles, this one resides instead on Woodhaven Boulevard. The building features a wide variety of exterior finishes, from circular metal grillwork on the corner stairtower to blue enamel panels and from a glass wall exposing the staircase on the side elevation to stone finishes along the ground floor. This design best showcases architect Jerome Perlstein’s interest in exterior finishes.